Born in Belarus in 1990 and brought up in St Petersburg, Russia in one of the toughest times in history for the country, the fall of the Soviet Union, she remembers life there as a bit of a struggle.
‘‘I don’t remember seeing soldiers, it isn’t like the movies. We walked everywhere, we had no issues or danger. The financial situation wasn’t great, but as a kid your parents shelter you away from all of that. I didn’t realise we were poor, but as a mum now, I realise how much my mother did.’’
‘‘I step back now and think I could write a book.’’
She is talking about her whirlwind dash to the other side of the world at just 15. At school a scholarship was offered for a competition in her English class, she won it.
As a 15-year-old to a single mother, she was flown to Auckland alone to study for a year and a-half.
‘‘I thought I would go over [and] study for a year and get the diploma and come back home, but through that year and a-half there was a realisation that I would love to stay.
‘‘So I applied for another scholarship and got it and carried on studying and carried on and got residency.’’
Her first scholarship was in commerce, which is a far cry from the blooms and hundreds of fresh hen eggs that surround her every day just off the Maungawera Valley.
Taking a little bit of her Russian heritage with her, she recalls growing up and visiting her grandparents’ farm every summer for three months.
‘‘My grandparents always had a beautiful garden with an orchard and they grew all of the produce for three families.’’
‘‘Every summer I spent three months in Belarus and learned all the horticulture. We were put to work, weeded the garden, the harvesting and preserving.’’
To this day, some families in Russian cities still have a small piece of land in the countryside where they grow produce to feed the family.
‘‘Pretty much every Russian family has a garden, it is just how we grew up.’’
She recalls her grandparents, who were qualified space engineers, having mounds of flowers around the small farm, which was predominantly for vegetables and animals. ‘‘They always had flowers in the garden, grandad had this specific spot for his roses and nobody else was allowed to touch his roses. He was the rose guy.’’
‘‘Grandma grew everything from Asta through to flox and all the rest.’’
Ms Yakzhik herself has a giant cottage garden she now makes a living from, and her own favourite, tulips, because every February on her birthday in the northern hemisphere the tulips were the flower of the season.
February 4 will mark 20 years in New Zealand for her. ‘‘I was always adamant that I would grow tulips and I would live somewhere where I can grow tulips — Central Otago was god’s gift.
After years working as a gardener and then a manager for parks and recreation, Alpine Blooms started as a passion project when she became pregnant with her first of two children.
‘‘It is a fulltime job but at the same time you come to flowers every day and you have to pinch yourself because of the views and the flowers.
‘‘Every farmer knows themselves that if you pay yourself an hour for farming you would never earn any money.’’
The good outweighs the bad, she says. This Mother’s Day she and fellow local farmer Ali Soper are hosting the first Harvest Festival at the Alpine Blooms farm.
‘‘It’s going to be part of the Alpine Blooms’ legacy hopefully.’’
The festival will be centred around pumpkins, with all local producers invited to register for the day.
There will be stalls of harvested goods, music and photo opportunities galore.
‘‘It is a fun day out for the family to come on Mother’s Day and spend some time and shop local and enjoy [the] harvest.’’
Looking back to that little girl flying over to New Zealand, she still cannot believe she did it.
‘‘We were always raised quite independent with mum. She couldn’t be there as much as she was working and providing for the family so we looked out for each other.’’
‘‘When you are 15 in a new country with a different language there were some homesick moments. But it was part of upbringing — you stick to it and you do it and something good will come of it.’’
She looks at her own two children growing up in Wa ¯naka and hopes to teach them what a privilege it is to be here.
‘‘They don’t know how lucky they are.’’
